THE Hollywood star George Clooney is being credited with inspiring an actors’ boycott against film award ceremonies that threatens to reduce next weekend’s Golden Globe Awards to a shambles and is jeopardising the most important event in the Hollywood calendar, next month’s Oscars.

This weekend the Screen Actors Guild announced that the 70 actors shortlisted for awards at the Globes will not be attending the ceremony in sympathy with scriptwriters who have been on strike for two months.

Officially, television network NBC, which splits millions of advertising dollars with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, organiser of the Globes, says the show will go on. Both bodies said on Friday they were in “an extremely difficult position” and would try to woo the actors back.

Behind the scenes NBC is split between those who are in despair seeking to salvage the festival and those raging at the “disloyalty” of actors.

Special ire is reserved for Clooney, 46. “We know Clooney is a major force behind this decision. He has been earbashing others who may have been willing to cross picket lines,” said one NBC executive.

Sources close to Clooney have laughed at the image of “Red George” as a strike-organiser. “He does not earbash, he is far too easy-going for that,” said a business associate.

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